Why ALL Marketers Need To Use NFTs In Their Growth Playbook

The beauty of NFTs is that there's more incentive alignment here, meaning that let's say you buy a course for $1,000 or so, maybe you can sell it. If it's an NFT, you can actually sell it afterwards and it can actually appreciate too, because the whole idea here is that if people really like your product and if people really like the community that you've put together, maybe tied to the product, then that product is going to appreciate. In this video, I am going to talk about why all marketers will eventually use NFTs in their playbook. So my name is Eric Siu, creator of Leveling Up Heroes, here to help level up the world, and let's just get into it. So the quote I always come back to time and time again is from famed investor Charlie Munger, and he's always said, show me the incentive and I'll show you the outcome. So human beings, we're all driven by incentives, right? A, like, how much are you gonna pay me? Well, what if I'm performing? I want some type of bonus. Or maybe if I'm going to co-found a company with you and spend years of my life doing it, maybe I get some equity. So, it's always been about incentives. And that's how you get people to actually do things, right? What is the actual incentive? And so, show me the incentive and I'll show you the outcome. Now, previously, when you would— let's say you launch a course, for example. Let's say you launch an education program or a product. What happens afterwards is, let's say you buy the course. Let's— you're the customer. You buy the course. You maybe spend $1,000, $2,000. $5,000, $20,000, who knows what it is, right? But afterwards, that money is gone. And like, you'd hope that you've taken that knowledge and you start to take action on it. But that course becomes basically useless, right? You've used it already. So the beauty of NFTs is that there's more incentive alignment here, meaning that let's say you buy a course for $1,000 or so, maybe you can sell it afterwards and it can actually appreciate too, because the whole idea here is that if people really like your product and if people really like the community that you've put together, maybe tied to the product, then that product is going to appreciate because it's scarce and more and more people want it, right? And so there's a lot of dynamics at play here. But my point is, that's one example of incentives being more aligned, right? Like the creator and also the customer, they are— their incentives are more aligned. Like the customers, like they're more incentivized to actually talk about the product more and then actually give more helpful feedback because they're actually part of the actual project, right? Right? And if they do decide to sell it again, they can reap the rewards of that in the future. And then the benefit of the creator too is that they're incentivized to continue to deliver value because they're gonna continue to get resales on this as well, right? So it's very early days right now, but when you think about just incentives alone, well, incentives are powerful, right? So that's why I believe that a lot of marketers are going to be using NFTs because it creates more alignment. And when you have an entire community that will rally around you, That's one of the best forms of marketing that you can have instead of just paying the ad platforms and then renting their traffic. Right. Because once you start turning that traffic off, the firehose comes off, then you're in trouble. Right. And the ad costs are getting more expensive and a lot of privacy laws and all that. So we got to think about as marketers how we can get better overall at marketing and adding NFTs to our toolbox, our repertoire. That's going to be super helpful for the long term. It's best to understand how this works by building something so you can have the scar tissue. And you're going to have a leg up on the competition. It's still— I was talking with the Cameo CEO the other day and using a baseball comparison, we're not even the first inning right now. Like, it's still early days right now. We're just kind of messing around with this world of NFTs. Right. So if you can jump on this stuff, get a strong understanding around it, then you're going to be in a good spot. And I just want to give you a couple of examples, too. Now, before I do, if you enjoyed this, hit the like and the subscribe button because it helps us grow. All right. So the first example here is VeeCon. So Gary Vee is a well-known marketer, entrepreneur, and he's built a lot of different things. And I think what he's done is impressive with his, with his NFT project called VeeFriends. And what VeeFriends includes is a conference, right? It includes a conference at the very least, includes a conference for the next 3 years or so. And, you know, these are all, these were all originally hand-drawn by him and his plans to kind of make his own version of Disney. And so he's incentivized to continue to work on this because his reputation is on the line. I think they've done over $100 million in transaction volume on this, on this NFT. And so he, he better put his best foot forward here. And also with his conference, I can tell you that his first conference is happening in the next couple of months or so. And the, the level of talent that's going to be there, you have kind of the CEO of Time, right? They've got their own NFT project. The D'Amelios, right? You know, kind of famous for their TikToks. Jake or Logan Paul, maybe both of them are going to be there too. So you have a lot of different influential people that will be there. And so, you know, he's done a good job with that. Like, A, like he's proven that he can deliver on his roadmap with the conference. And then also I can see with his version, his second version of VeeFriends, like you can see the art that's coming out and it looks a lot— it looks like, you know, you have a lot of people that have experience being added to the team and stuff is looking really good. Right. So incentives are aligned there because the more I talk about it and I'm holding it, I'm holding it for long term because I believe in him for the long term. Right. So I kind of feel like I'm in this together with him. And, you know, again, he has to deliver or else he's going to look like a fool because a lot of these projects, they're 99% of the NFT projects out there, they're just designed to be cash grabs. Right. But the ones that are going to build things for long term, like I'm talking to you as marketers from maybe you have a cool brand, you want to build something for long term, then you can really stand out from the 99% of the other people just by delivering. Right. And that's all it takes. A second example I want to use is from a guy named Brett Malinowski. And did a podcast interview with him. And he was just talking about how, like, I just gave you the example earlier from education products, like courses, for people to be able to resell those courses later. And you as a creator, you get kind of, you know, royalties from them. That's pretty cool, right? So Gary Vee, coming back to him again, he did about— I think he sold like over $1 million in presales using his new book as an NFT. And again, you just see the— like, his perspective now is, why would I continue to work with publishers when I have all the power? I have the audience myself. Why don't I just do that? And like, then I can develop the power of the community, right? People talk about Web1, Web2, Web3. And so Web1 is being able to read, right, from a programming standpoint. So you can read, right? Read-only. Just think of it that way. Web2 is you're able to write, you're able to kind of create on these large Web2 platforms like Like a Facebook, for example. Right now, Web3 is where you get to— where you get to own. And that's a really exciting piece. Again, incentives are aligned here. Now, the other example I'll give you is with our Leveling Up Heroes Epic program. So that includes a mastermind. So there's 3 masterminds a year, right, with really amazing people. And the other thing is when you have amazing people get together, amazing people tend to share deal flow, right? So, you know, it's a mastermind and then there's us There's people that are sharing deal flow. So you get to invest in kind of, you know, the most amazing companies out there. And I get deal flow from my podcast. I get deal flows from speaking, from the events that I throw as well, being able to share that deal flow. So I'm trying to, I'm trying to share that deal flow out there as well. Right. So that's going to be really exciting for the long term. So again, very early innings right now. And this is why I think all marketers should use NFTs in their playbook. You see a lot of big brands out there like the Heinekens, the Nikes of the world, the Under Armour of the world. Gucci's getting involved as well. That's more of a branding play for them. So still, they're using it in their playbook too. And so, you know, for the majority of us listening to this, whether you're a small or medium-sized business, it just makes a lot of sense still, right? And even if you're a big brand, there's just so many ways to play this. And, you know, I encourage you to think about NFTs as more of a— like when you buy a house, what are you actually buying? You're buying the deed, right? You're buying a signature, you're buying a piece of paper, right? Now, with NFTs, that's something that's harder to argue against because let's say if you buy a home and then your neighbors move next to you and then they decide that they're not going to follow the law and they're just going to, you know, take over your place, then they take over your place. Your signature, your deed means nothing. But a record on the blockchain, nobody can ever really argue with that. Right. So let me know what you think in the comments and if you agree, disagree, if you think I missed anything. And with that being said, you can check out the next piece of content over here as well. And we'll catch you later.

You know, a lot of people see the success stories of someone who just starts a YouTube channel and blows up right away. I was definitely not that. It took me from 0 to 100K subscribers, it took me 4 years in total with 2 different channels, like trying out 2 different channels until it really took off.